


over my dead body

by okaytlyn



Category: Lovelyz, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Humor, Inappropriate Humor, M/M, Multi, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6874873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaytlyn/pseuds/okaytlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minghao is a fresh, young undergraduate, interning at a morgue to assist in forensic pathology. Mingyu, well, Mingyu is a stale, dead body. Was a dead body, until two seconds ago. Now he's naked and flailing his rigor mortis-stricken limbs, which leads Minghao to the conclusion that he's already screwed, first day on the job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. use somebody (someone like you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> you know, csi? bones? like the guy that dissects the body to find out the cause of death through autopsy? this is kind of what minghao does, but not really. it's what he's studying for but he's interning at a morgue now, that does go through that process but mostly focuses on the certification, identification of death + preparing the body for funerals and after, etc. 
> 
> um also necromancy= bringing the dead back to life  
> will be gross later, not now tho. leggo????

The sky is bleak, and all Minghao sees is black. Black shoes, black robes. The sky is crying and so is he.

The funeral procession leads him inside the church, and somehow, the rain doesn’t stop, but the skies clear just enough for the sun to shine through. The modest coffin lays amidst a flowerbed, a few steps away from the pulpit. Right above the coffin, a four glass panels let traces of light stream through resplendently like pieces of the puzzle that make up the high ceiling of the church. It illuminates his grandfather’s body, and Minghao thinks, it’s the healthiest his grandfather has looked all his life – which is ironic, because he’s not alive anymore. The late Mr. Xu’s dark glasses are placed at the feet of his coffin.

Minghao likes to think it’s a way to say his grandfather’s set free from from a life of darkness, and now he’s going to see everything without a shadow of visual impairment holding him back.

“Mr Xu lived a long life of peace and solitude, and at 96, he has departed from us. Today, we-“

The eulogies go in and out of Minghao’s ears; relatives who know close to nothing about his grandfather describe his solitary lifestyle superficially, force their eyes to moisten and squeeze out a tear, then proceed to choke out the rest of their rehearsed speech.

 

He closes his eyes and thinks of afternoons where sunlight streams through the windows, too, but it hits the floor and makes the kitchen look like it’s gone through the Sepia filter on Instagram. His grandfather’s singing a Jackie Cheung song, and Minghao’s practicing his wushu moves with an imaginary partner; six-year old him thinks he needs to practice his五步拳 more to impress his instructor the next day; eighty-year old grandpa watches him with a crinkled smile on his face and Minghao doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but he hopes his grandpa’s impressed, too.

 

Someone tugs at his sleeves and he’s steered towards a queue. Everyone’s lining up to pay their last respects, doing the customary U-turn by the coffin that may mean something to a select few, and to most people at the ceremony, nothing at all.

His mother goes before him, leaving a bouquet of lilies by the casket that she had bought after eons of research – he’d used her phone yesterday and the first entry in her search history was “acceptable funeral flowers”. He doesn’t blame her, honestly.

When Minghao himself meets his grandfather during the open casket ceremony, time seems to stop.

He holds his grandfather’s hand, and it almost creeps him out how it’s still _warm._ Minghao looks at his grandpa’s closed, serene eyes, because there’s nothing to fear. He wants to apologize for leaving China – leaving him - when he turned eight, he wants to say so much but he can’t. The people behind him are at a polite distance, but Minghao senses they’re getting impatient.

He’s about to leave, when the hand in the coffin tightens its grip on Minghao’s own.

_Holy-_

The closed eyes of serenity? They open.

_This isn’t real_

Minghao’s head fills with white noise, and all he can think of is that the hired mortician for this funeral did a too-stellar job of restructuring his grandpa’s face because _oh god he just smiled oh my god he’s mouthing words out this is not real this is-_

When the figure on the coffin’s mouthed its last words beyond death, the eyes close once more with an air of finality.

Minghao’s mouth opens and shuts repeatedly, words unable to form themselves as he looks towards the crowd like a fish out of water. He’s losing his shit, he’s losing his mind and-

Blinding light flashes before Minghao and he thinks he feels like he’s _set on fire_ and the eyes of his grandfather’s close. Minghao thinks he hears glass shattering from above, he thinks he smells something burning and then he doesn’t even think anymore because the world is now black and so is his mind.

 

 

 

When Minghao wakes up, there’s more than a dozen people in the operating theatre, and someone drops a clipboard.

Someone screams. Someone cries. His mother’s bounding towards him in happiness and Minghao peers at the dropped jaws of the medical personnel.

The arms of his mother wrap fiercely around him, and she’s sobbing. All he can make out of the blubbering mess is “I thought you were gone”.

After his mother lets go, Minghao gingerly picks up the clipboard.

It’s a death certificate.

_Name: Xu Minghao_

_Time of death: 6:28 p.m, 30 April, 2016_

_Age at time of death: 21 years and 7 months_

“I died?” Minghao asks, and he’s so, so lost.

_But I just woke up?_

He peers at the digital clock at the front of the operating theatre. _7:31 p.m._

A doctor smiles shakily, holding a hand out for the clipboard. “I guess we won’t be needing this anymore.”

“What happened?”

“The heart rate monitor was became flat for the past hour, and then suddenly it spiked. You were legally dead. For an hour. But it’s alright, there’s been Near-Death Experiences or NDEs all over the world before, so I guess fate wanted to give you a second chance.”

 

Later, Minghao learns that lightning had struck him during the open-casket ceremony, causing the glass panels from above to shatter and the funeral procession was stopped. He had been rushed to the A&E, with a 3% chance of survival.

“However, you were a bizarre case. Lightning strikes would cause great damage – burns, extreme haemorrhage, - especially with a direct hit like yours. But the only thing that left enough trace of a lightning strike injury was the Lichtenberg figure that you have, from your right wrist to your chest and stomach.”

“Lichtenberg figure?” Minghao had asked Doctor Wang.

“You know, the red, branching electric discharge pattern across your body. It’s like, the path the lightning took through your capillaries.”

“Oh, the lightning flower? How long will it last?”

“For most people, a few hours or a few days.”

 

-

 

It’s been two weeks.

Two weeks since the whole bizarre shit fest, two weeks since the funeral, two weeks since his whole born again ordeal. The Lichtenberg figure is still imprinted deep into his skin, showing no signs of going away any time.

He does _not_ feel like Jesus Christ after resurrection. Xu Minghao is now mugging till his soul is no more in his newly rented apartment, labelling his skeletal kit and cramming as many biological terms as he can into his puny brain. Tomorrow he will shake hands with the dead again and he sure as hell is not going to screw it up.

When he’s tired, he’ll drink the horrid 3-in-1 Instamix coffee, two packets concentrated in one cup. When he’s hungry, he’ll eat the leftover macaroni from yesterday. When he’s discouraged, well, he’ll look up.

He’ll look up, as in, he’ll face the wall to the right, peer at his undergraduate certificate that signifies the completion of his four year degree in forensic pathology. And then, tell himself that he’s going to slay the shit out of his next upcoming four years of his residency program – that starts tomorrow, because before the phone call from Anshan, before the funeral, before he... slept, for an hour, he had a dream, an aspiration, and nothing's going to stop him. Minghao’s lucky he gets to intern as a pathologist straight away, let alone get an internship. Some of his friends slaving away at a medical degree can’t even get one, or spend their days doing odd jobs at a clinic.

Somehow, Minghao had hoped to gain some kind of encounter with death that could give him an edge in his pathology course or his new internship, maybe an un-investigated prior-death process or perhaps a trigger response just before the last breath, but all Minghao has is a shadow of a dream – he knows something happened, something important, but he doesn’t remember _what_ it was. It distracts him awfully as he tries to study – his mind tries to recall, but as soon as he grasps onto a figment of the memory, it slips through his fingers yet again. 

 

 

He looks at the wall clock and sighs.

4:36 am. He really needs to sleep.

4:37 am. Minghao lies down, and closes his eyes.

 

4:38 am. Once more, he tries to recall the dream he had during the NDE, but it’s like calling an unknown number. No one picks up. (Ah, but the thing with unknown numbers, is that you'd never know if they got the call, and if they did, well... )

 

 

4:39 am. He can only recall seeing his grandfather’s face, illuminated once more by sunlight through glass panels that have yet to fall, his mouth moving awkwardly, and now, on the verge of being awake and being asleep, Minghao, trying hard to decipher the words on his lips, thinks his grandfather was saying something along the lines of “thank you for being a burden” or “thank you for easing my burden”.  He hopes it’s the latter, but then, not really, because _what kind of burden was grandpa carrying?_

4:40 am. This is where sleep consumes him. This is where he doesn’t need to think anymore – anymore, being the next few hours of shut-eye before the world collapses before him again tomorrow – but Minghao doesn’t know that, doesn’t he?


	2. painted faces fill the places I can’t reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> minghao starts the first day of work with an enthusiatic boss, less enthusiastic workers, and 3187E, the mystery homicide victim that does the unthinkable during post-mortem analysis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i don't take bio so SPARE ME i did so much research // although he's describing a corpse i'm trying my level best to make it light-hearted so laugh and release those decomposing gases ok)  
> i love minghao i'm so sorry minghao  
> i did u dirty minghao

Pyeonghan Hospital, Minghao decides the moment he sees the floor plan of the basement, is cool.

 

Of course, the basement itself is cool, because it’s the goddamned temporal mortuary and temperatures are kept at two to four degrees celcius. But then, there’s the tunnel he’s walking through that extends two hundred metres to the east from under the hospital; and then, the ultra-sterilised smell is gone. Faint formaldehyde fills his nose and dryly, Minghao laughs, hands trailing over the metal walls of the corridor.

“I’m home.” The phrase bounces off the metal walls. He smiles, and on hindsight he probably looks like the sardonic villain at the start of every horror movie. (He swears he’s not).

“AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY”, the sign reads. Minghao brings his finger to the reader, and when green flashes across the panel, the door pops open to reveal a warehouse of sorts, shelves stacked systematically with body bags that line the walls up for four metres or so. A chill runs down his spine, but reasonable judgement tells him that it’s just the fact that the body room’s a cold storage in itself. The air is even colder here, but it’s all in the name of slowing decomposition so Minghao’s got to learnt to live with this for the next four years.

“Oh hi! You’re the new guy aren’t you?”

There’s a man wearing a snapback backwards, leaning against the shelf as he balances on one of the top prongs of the ladder. He’s all smiles and his name is-

“I’m Seungcheol!” he chirps from where he’s at, his arms flexing in mid-air as he brings down a bag of a particularly big-framed body from the top shelf. The door springs open from the further end of the storage room cum warehouse to reveal a guy with crinkled eyes and a stupid grin plastered on his face fumbling with his speaker until a [loud, ominous tolling of a bell is generated from the speaker in hand.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzwADJqf_Ok)

The bell sound’s repeated until familiar instrumental follows, and Minghao actually pries his earphones out and laughs.

(Seungcheol’s head is buried in his hands – if his head were a body he’d be more than six feet under.)

“Is that,” Minghao hiccups as he tries to silence his ugly guffaws, “Is that The Undertaker’s theme song from WWE? ‘Rest In Peace’?”

“I’m Soonyoung, morgue technician slash law assistant and kid, that guy? He’s the Undertaker,” speaker dude says with a _grave_ expression as he points to Seungcheol that’s backing down the ladder, body bag across his shoulders in a display of Herculean strength and balance.

Seungcheol waves the remark away – like swatting at the stale air with his free hand would stop Soonyoung from laughing at his own gag. “Well, you’re the intern right? Let’s just say Soonyoung’s life goal in the office is to play this goddamned meme every time I meet someone new. Over time, it’s not funny anymore. _Right, Soonyoung?”_

Seungcheol raises his voice pointedly at Soonyoung, who’s skipping out of the cold storage with glee.

“For the record,” Seungcheol sighs like the father of two hyperactive children as he watches Soonyoung’s figure get smaller and smaller before he disappears round the bend, “I’m the funeral director. I’m not the buff guy in eyeliner from WWE. I’m also your boss.”

Oh. _Oh._ Minghao quickly bows.

“After I bring dear Gertha to the embalming room, I’ll settle the admin stuff for you, alright?” Minghao nods blankly, not after realising belatedly that Gertha referred to the corpse lying snugly across his boss’s shoulders.

 

 

“So yeah, I’m sorry you had to come in from Pyeonghan Hospital’s side to get to the morgue.” Seungcheol apologises as they climb the stairs up to the second level. “It’s just that our facility doesn’t have a carpark, and we’re affiliated with the hospital, both our pathological lab and funeral home, so we get to park there. Were you scared walking through that tunnel?”

“Scared? Nah, it was pretty cool.” Minghao responds like this. He hopes this shows that he’s professional and badass, or something. His boss seems like a Nice Boss™, and he really does _not_ want to screw this job up.

“Oh, that’s great! Anyway, here’s the embalming room – yeah, it’s like plastic surgery for the dead! Pretty neat, huh?”

(Minghao thinks his boss is pretty cheery for his occupation, but oh well.)

The door opens to reveal two people fighting; the short-haired girl with the makeup palette in hand but no makeup on her face and the other guy, significantly taller, sitting on the roller chair.

“The percentage of formaldehyde in the embalming fluid is too fucking high, Wonwoo. At least get this shit right – this guy’s having a sea burial after funeral and I don’t want the concentration of formaldehyde to kill the crustaceans and stuff.”

Wonwoo’s rolling his eyes. “His body’s just going to stay in the goddamn casket, I don’t see the problem-”

“It’s carcinogenic, bitch,” the girl shoots back, all bark with no bite, “It affects aquatic invertebrates the most; and I ain’t gonna kill no jellyfish.”

“Korea has no jellyfish!”

“…So! There we have our mortician, Myungeun! Say hi, Myungeun!” Seungcheol chirps amidst the heated debate and said girl turns around to give her boss a withering smile, only to brighten up when she notices the presence of someone else completely.

“Oh, hi! New guy, right? You’re gonna do the autopsies and all, huh. Great news for us, not so great news for you then.”

Minghao scratches his head. _What?_

Myungeun tosses her hair over her shoulder with a bodily jerk – her hands are stained with chemicals and stale blood – and looks pointedly at the man giving her the stinkeye. “He’s so slow at diagnosis. This is Wonwoo, he’s our resident sloth. He moves slower than a dead body can. We’re so thankful that you’re here, M-m.. what was it?”

“Minghao.”

“Right, Minghao. Anyway, I’m Myungeun and stop looking at me like that,” she pouts. “My job title sounds morbid, but I’m a makeup artist, really. Call me Coordi-noona, if you will.”

At this, Minghao laughs and Wonwoo sighs. “Why do people laugh at things like this! Myungeun, you’re not funny, don’t be flattered, the kid just probably doesn’t understand Korean.”

Myungeun shoves the man beside her with a clean elbow. “Don’t be an asshole on his first day, Wonwoo. You’re gross.”

“ _Look!_ Seungcheol, she calls me gross, and what does she do? Elevate flattened eyeballs, extract internal tissue, take out cigarette-blackened organs, lung by lung? You’ve got a hypocrite in the house, boss. Call 911!”

Seungcheol mildly panics amongst forced laughs and coughs as they bicker. Minghao suspects this isn’t a first.

“Jeon Wonwoo, can you get back to work? Minghao’s going to use the autopsy surgery room later this afternoon, so tidy it up please. At least register in six more bodies by then because hospital influx is going to be relentless later on.”

Minghao smiles hopefully at Wonwoo. Wonwoo rolls his eyes. _God, Wonwoo probably hates me already,_ Minghao thinks as he watches the man give a final middle finger to Myungeun before he trudges downstairs -  who returns the gesture graciously by sticking her tongue out.

Later, as Seungcheol helps him settle in with administrative matters, Minghao leans awkwardly against the wall, strangely compelled to pour out his thoughts. Or something. It’s the weirdest sensation – one comforting look from his boss makes him feel like he’ll be alright for the next four years if he voices out his troubles. _Maybe that’s why Seungcheol’s the funeral director. Maybe that’s why he’s able to console angry, volatile families that come charging in, in hordes._

“Boss, uh, do you think Wonwoo hates me?” And oh my, he just sounded like a child.

Seungcheol immediately looks up amidst the paper work. “Hey, don’t call me that. And well, let’s just say Wonwoo’s colder than a frozen potato to anyone else really. You just witnessed a freak occasion kind of thing. He’s only like this with Myungeun.”

“Really? Does he…”

“I think so too, but don’t ever talk about it, “Seungcheol giggles, “or Myungeun will come with her micro-chisel and all. They’re so noisy, sorry about that.” Minghao’s reeling a little from the culture shock – a morgue as a workplace where everyone’s treated like family? A boss apologising to a lowly intern? Seungcheol feeling like the father he’s never had? It’s, well, new. He’d expected gloomy colleagues and a dark atmosphere but evidently, this wasn’t it.

Apparently, how things work is that in their combined facility, they hold both pathological labs and homes for funeral preparation. Casket galleries, crematorium, embalming rooms on the second floor.  Office, visiting rooms (all things sane and neutral) on the first floor where distraught relatives stream in and come out sated with the Seungcheol Effect, and then, they have the basement. The basement’s where all the good stuff happens   -  pathological labs with better quality tools than his university ever provided, operating theatres that feel more like a kitchen (in a way, the human corpse is not unlike a slab of meat), and finally, the beloved body room.

“The hospital’s connected to the morgue through the underground tunnel so we can easily access their collected corpses. Many of the patients families arrange for convenient funeral preparations so we, as affiliates, usually serve them after the patient passes away,” Seungcheol briefs him after he settles the paper work, waving to a police officer that steps in at the front entrance. “For you and Wonwoo, you usually work with the bodies that undergo sudden, unexplained death from the hospital, cases from the police department – usually homicide, or simply bodies found in an uncertain manner. I’m sure you know all of this, right?”

Minghao nods.`

“We’ll try to give you the easier ones first. This morgue’s kind of short-handed so there’s no way we’re letting you do odd jobs.  Wonwoo’s an expert when he applies himself, so I’ll leave the homicide and unnatural death cases to him. I think a female in her teens just came in, suspected of carbon monoxide poisoning suicide. Also, a renal cancer patient from the hospital this morning. I’m sure you can work on _that_ , huh? Email me the preliminary autopsy results in six hours please. Off you go!”

 

 

 _The sun is shining outside, and it’s ten in the morning. It’s the perfect weather to examine bodies,_ Minghao thinks, whistling as he passes by yet another tired looking cop from the Crime Scene department, the “Lee Jihoon” on his badge twinkling in the poor lighting of the corridor. Minghao gingerly pushes open the door to Lab 2, only to see Wonwoo hunched over his computer.

“Finishing up a report?” Minghao tries very hard to sound sympathetic.

Wonwoo raises his eyebrows, and turns the laptop around. “Uh-huh.”

He’s playing Space Invaders.

Minghao honestly wonders how this morgue has been handling the orders from all directions – the hospital, the police, external sources – especially since the facility’s known to process approximately 1100 bodies per annum. Of course, he does not voice his concerns.

“So which one do I start on?”

“Do you even understand Korean?”

“Yes, for crying out loud,” Minghao begins, unable to stop himself. Man, he tried so hard to upkeep his image. “Do you want me to cry out loud in Korean?”

“Or you could fuck yourself and process the Easter Egg, grasshopper,” Wonwoo spits. “The Easter Egg’s serial number is, uh, 3187E, left column. Go figure, I want prelim results on my desk by dawn.”

Minghao’s left spluttering _what the hell is the Easter Egg didn’t Seungcheol ask me to do the suicide victim_ before he’s shoved out of the room. As he stumbles out of Wonwoo’s personal lab, particulars of the body he needs to locate in hand, he runs in to Soonyoung.

“Oh hi, remember me? New guy?”

“Sure! Was Wonwoo on his period?”  
“What?”

“He gets pissy a lot. Internalised emotions, I don’t know. Don’t be sad that he went all bitchy on you,” Soonyoung sighs, patting Minghao on the back like he _understands._

“Oh, well then do you know what Wonwoo means by Easter Egg? He asked me to process it.”

Soonyoung’s eyes go wide, fluctuating between alarm and pity, then settling on a slow smirk. “Unidentified death. Like, bodies that were found with suspected murder outside, but the police aren’t notified yet? Yeah, it happens. Good luck, kid.”

 

When Soonyoung leaves, Minghao is even less assured. _Great._ However, Xu Minghao likes challenges. At least, that’s what he tells himself, steeling his own body towards the body storage, muttering curses in Mandarin under his breath. 3187E is located at the very end of the storage room, where bodies that come in within the past sixteen to twenty hours reside. 3187E’s locker slot is only enclosed with a five-digit number lock, which Minghao easily opens. 3187E, however, is a _really_ long body, and as Minghao hauls the body bag onto the gurney, he feels a cold substance squelch from beneath the rubber inner lining of body bag.

Cold, clotting blood. _Oh boy, 3187E is gonna be messy._

Slowly, he unzips the bag from the middle, top down. The pungent smell of stale blood and initial decomposition fills Minghao’s nostrils, and he flinches, more out of sad sympathy than of being grossed out, at scene before him.

There’s knife slashes all over the body – kind of like a twisted variant of abstract art. One from the corner of the left eyelid to the tip of his chin, and two almost symmetrical long drawn lines from the start of the victim’s shoulder’s to the wrist.

He’s not even going to start with the lower body of 3187E. His trousers, with areas cut out with almost clinical precision – near rectangular portions empty of cloth -  are caked with blood, sticking to skin and he’ll only be able to diagnose it once he’s cleaned the body. There are, however, no wounds to vital organs or veins –his chest is unmarred, jugular vein and wrists free of cuts.

 _Poor dude probably died of exsanguination. This is a homicide,_ Minghao realizes as he stares at the photograph of 3187E when he was found dead in a dried up ditch near the outskirts of Incheon.

He runs an initial DNA check to confirm the identity of the man lying on the gurney next to him, confirming the corpse to be Kim Mingyu, Seoul National University student, 22 years old at time of death. _Dang, he was my age._ Examining corpses near his age always made Minghao wonder on about _what if that was me_ in some kind of twisted way. _What if I died alone in a ditch, skin festering upon the onset of decay, bleeding out with nobody by my side?_

That’s a shitty way to go.

 

Minghao photographs the corpse to cover every inch of surface area as possible, and as the pictures show up in the inkjet printer, he thinks off-handedly that the dead guy before him had a great bone structure. This guy must have been popular in college. _But oh well. He’s probably even more popular post-mortem_. The body’s already done with algor mortis and rigor mortis has just started to set in. As Minghao peels off whatever’s left of Kim Mingyu’s trousers, we winces at the raw, festering flesh he finds at the inner thigh area, and a large stab wound from the top. Something about the whole procedure reminds Minghao of _Lingchi_ , an ancient East Asian process where the victim’s skinned – alive or dead depending on circumstance. For Kim Mingyu, his only coup de grâce – if it was even one, was the deep thigh stab. He probably wouldn’t have lasted more than fifteen minutes after it.

The more he examines the body, the more it looks like an attempted torture session than deliberated murder.

To ease the putrefaction process and to prevent gas build-up in the body, a pathologist has to sadly insert a hollow needle into the corpse to release the gas. Which isn’t a job for the faint-hearted, Minghao muses as Mingyu’s body lunges forward and a victorious fart resounds. “ _Sorry_ man,” Minghao sympathises, “ _I hope you liked anal_.”

Minghao’s gotta bathe and clothe the corpse next, which is disorienting in itself, but it’s always been a multiple person process. He is, however, left on his own, after being unable to find Wonwoo in his office and not wanting to climb two storeys just to find him in Myungeun’s operating room either. The body’s fucking heavy despite the pints of blood lost, which isn’t the struggle, but Kim Mingyu just keeps fucking bleeding out from his thigh, where he was skinned over an almost B5 sized patch, under the shower. The water is red and smelly from putrefaction, everything’s a mess.

He hopes the water pipes to the pantry bring in fresh water from the local tank and not from their high-tech osmosis machine.

Mingyu’s much paler than his photo on his ID now from the constant blood loss – bodily clotting issues being an evident sign of exsanguination – and he looks like a vampire. A hot mess, except he’s deathly cold.

Minghao moves on to washing off the caked blood trapped within the wound on his face, starting from the chin up. The water trailing down his cheekbones makes 3187E look like he’s crying blood.

Softly, he pads his fingers over the facial skin in circular motion to check for skin slippage. His skin’s still mainly intact though, meaning that decomposition’s only set in and accelerated in the areas where he was skinned.

Something in Minghao’s brain goes off to tell him that this position looks terribly intimate from a third person’s persepective; Minghao’s face inches above the rotting, wet corpse, hands cradling the sides of Mingyu’s face. It’s like Snow White got slashed to death and here’s Prince Charming, bending over his body to give the kiss of life.

He laughs aloud at his own thoughts. The laughter echoes in hollow, shallow rebounds – god, he’s so alone in this. _It’s just a dead guy, you’ve done this before in college._

The rotational movement of his fingers above the cheekbone has the wound open a bit more, and before Minghao can even mutter a word of frankly useless apology to the dead man, Mingyu’s left eyelid slowly opens, followed by the right; the white of his eyeballs disappearing as his eyes lull back to normal position, revealing sunken, brown pupils.

Minghao holds his breath. Something from this scene feels magical – feels horribly wrong. Feels like his encounter at the open-casket funeral with his grandfather. Maybe his own eyes are failing him – everything feels like an optical illusion seen by someone overdosed on shrooms. Sunken pupils inflate back to round ones characteristic of someone alive. Some part of Minghao’s soul feels like it’s being emptied as the dead eyes stare boundlessly into his and as the head he’s cradling doesn’t feel that cold anymore.

Somehow, he can’t tear his gaze away – there’s a magnetic pull toward the orbs before him that fill up with life and Minghao hopes, prays, wishes that he were high or dreaming as his own body freezes while his thoughts runs amok.

 

 

 

 

_Back in his university, he was a legend._

_No one could tell, really, that he was the sophomore with the unexpected expertise in Pathology, with his cute, unassuming face and clumsy hands – God, he tripped over everything. But students would only get a glimpse of Xu #LegendsOnly Minghao in the operating theatre. He never squirmed at any of the half-decayed, maggot-infested bodies brought to class for open examination and live evisceration. He’d use the rusty rib shears to saw open the breastplate with deadly precision and with the kind of strength you’d see from Biblical Samson in his most relaxed state – not from the lanky guy wearing skinny jeans that wrinkle and crease around his thighs. All sorts of unfounded rumors surrounded his existence on campus – was Xu Minghao a past triad gang leader in China? Did he specialise in general forensic pathology to know how to carry out future murders without getting caught? Was he on steroids? Were his ears this cute because he was a past angel? Or was he from hell?_

_Perhaps the best thing about the rumors was that he knew close to nothing about them. Perhaps the best thing was that Minghao only knew about how others had died, and about how to stay alive in college, Wang Lee Hom songs plaguing the earphones plugged into his ear canal whenever active listening wasn’t necessary._

_To sum it up, he was good, he was great, not as much with the living, but rather, the dead._

 

Now, here he is, kneeling over a corpse, panicking, and near tears.

The corpse jerks in his arms, jaw going slack, his mouth snapping open. Minghao doesn’t believe anything anymore when instead of releasing gas, the corpse sucks in air loudly like a drowning hippo and _holy fuck_

3187E, Kim Mingyu, from Anyang, Gyeonggi-do province, wakes the fuck up and his limbs are moving to his own accord, accidentally punching Minghao in the face with a bloody fist and _his body is warm._

The dead, naked man’s now crawling and hitting everything, his thighs injured far too severely to walk and Minghao’s soul successfully leaves his body when 3187E knocks over a bottle of formaldehyde and a UV lamp at the same time.

Minghao thinks the reasonable thing to do is to run away with a fucking naked zombie wrecking the laboratory.

Minghao, however, is not a very reasonable person. Minghao isn’t actually able to fathom how one’s supposed to function level-headedly when a gigantic dead man wakes up in your arms. So he runs… towards The Corpse, words bubbling at his throat but unable to make their way out.

“Oh my god stop _fucking moving!”_ Minghao finally manages to say. The guy freezes, and slowly, his head turns to the side to lock eyes with Minghao.

_fuck this shit I’m out I’m so out this is like the goddamned cliff-hanger moment in the walking dead where the zombie turns their head 180 degrees and singles you out this is when I, xu minghao, will die as I get eaten alive by wonwoo’s fucking easter egg wow fuck is he going to kill me because I stuck a needle up his ass or because I cleaned his open wounds with half a bottle of ethanol_

 

Mingyu’s arm slowly rises to point at Minghao – point blank, like he’s raising a handgun. The dead man’s mouth forms a syllable, rounded and definitive, his voice hoarse with disuse.

“You.”

_Me?_

“You brought me back.”


	3. walls are shaking (when you're touching me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mingyu and Minghao have a few things in common. For example, they're twenty-two, they're freaking out, and now the ECG monitor can't detect any signs of life within both of their very animated bodies.  
> In which Soonyoung faints, Wonwoo is less of an asshole, and Mingyu still doesn't know the name of the surgeon that he's been fighting the whole day.
> 
> // long chapter... to make up for months of not updating. story immediately picks up from where the last chapter ended

 

_You._

 

Kim Mingyu stands on wobbly knees, blood dripping out of his thighs, wet hair causing water to flow down wounds, leaving a waterfall of picturesque blood trails.

_You, the one I saw as I ascended into the white lights,_

With visible effort, he lulls his legs forward, step by step, stale blood beginning to moisten, liquefy, and move within his veins.

_You, the one who held me by the ankles with a gentle grasp, and shook his head,_

The guy in the surgical dress soiled with blood and bodily fluids backs away, with each step, terrified, until his back hits the cabinet with a dull thud and he rubs his head with a wince.

_You, the one who looked God in the eyes, and said, “Not him, not yet,”_

Mingyu knows a chance when he sees it. As the man rubs his head, he’s caught off guard and Mingyu slams a bloody palm against the cabinet, effectively trapping the man against all 185 cm of his semi-dead body.

_Why did you do it?_

Mingyu opens his mouth to demand an answer, but unlike the first syllable he had uttered, the sentences on the tip of his tongue turn to unfound gibberish – that turn to hacking coughs. The blood and water and saliva mingle into a horrible cocktail that plagues his throat when he attempts to speak and his eyes water at the taste.

Without warning, he’s flipped over against his will with unforeseen expertise, face smashing into the cabinet, the surgeon’s warm body pinning him down.

_It looks like I underestimated him._

“Look, I don’t know what you are, but you gotta let me go buddy,” the surgeon says, his voice a mishmash of low whispers and panting that never seems to catch up with each word.

Mingyu squirms impossibly against him and tries to kick away from cabinet, sending the both of them to the floor, now possibly dragging a metallic table full of surgical tools down with them.

“Stop moving!” The surgeon cries, trapping Mingyu despite being under him, his legs holding Mingyu in place, his back pressed against the floor. “You’re ruining your own evidence I need to know how you died!”

Mingyu’s still squirming while the surgeon’s got him caught in a slimy backhug on the ground, his thighs tackling the latter’s own. “I’m serious man you gotta stop-”

The surgeon’s palm presses down on the open wound across Mingyu’s left thigh in hopes of getting the zombie to stay in place, and it hurts like abitch, but all of a sudden, the door swings open, hitting the wall with a bang.

 

A man gapes at them wordlessly.

Mingyu stills, and so does the surgeon.

 

For a few, comical seconds, there is a pin drop silence that encases the room, and cradles it with delicate hands. His thigh is still exploding in pain as the hand stays there, and at some point of time, Mingyu decides he can’t take it anymore.

“Eeuugurts,” he grunts.

“Yoghurts?” The surgeon tries.

“-ucking hurts,” he manages to get out.

 

The man at the door promptly collapses.

-

 

 

Soonyoung wraps up yet another homicide report with a satisfying sigh, mouse clicking over the save button. He sends it to the regional police department’s email, without forgetting to type in a joke before his parting phrase.

 

 

 

> Dear Inspector Lee Seokmin,
> 
> The medical and forensic analysis of Madam Lee Seokyung can be found in the file attached below. Conflict between Pyeonghan and Jokhwan police departments should be resolved for a speedy joint case. Thank you for your cooperation. Speaking of conflict, why don't skeletons fight each other? Because they don't have the guts.
> 
> Yours truly,
> 
> Kwon Soonyoung, Acting Law Assistant of Pyeonghan Pathological Facility
> 
>  

“Seokmin’s going to hate that one,” Soonyoung chuckles to himself as he closes his laptop and walks out of his office, strolling through the hallways to get rid of the pins and needles in his feet.

_Should I go check on the new kid? His first case is already an Easter egg, he’s probably struggling now. Wonwoo probably scared him real bad._

He’s just descended the staircase to the basement when he hears a crashing noise from one of the surgery rooms. Someone grunts, and something crashes once again.

 “Stop moving!” he hears a voice shout, followed by inaudible words. It sounds like Minghao, did he fight with Wonwoo?

_But wait, Wonwoo was upstairs._

_What._

Soonyoung’s legs pick up speed, worry creeping in. Minghao should be the only person in the level, yet… with bated breath, he slams the door to the surgery room open.

The new kid’s hugging a naked man on the floor, dripping with blood. Soonyoung freezes and his eyes travel over the identification screen on the computer to register the dead man on the certificate as the one in Minghao’s arms.

_What.. the fuck.._

His knees go a little wobbly, and the floor spins hazily beneath him, opening up. Soonyoung lets it swallow him whole.

-

“I didn’t do anything!” Minghao protests while running with Seungcheol as they roll a propofol-sated Kim Mingyu, supposed corpse, serial number 3187E, on a gurney through the tunnel that connects the pathological lab with the hospital. They’re taking him to the Accident and Emergency wards to check on Mingyu’s wounds and his current condition.

“How could you fail to register this living man properly before even storing him in the body room?”

“That was Wonw-”

“I don’t think you understand the severity of this, Minghao,” Seungcheol stops rolling the gurney altogether. “This is a life we’re talking about, and the first thing you do is fight him? Didn’t you check for signs of life? You could have killed him during diagnosis.”

“His pupils didn’t constrict, I swear he was dead. Then he got up and fought me!”

Seungcheol shakes his head and continues rolling the gurney wordlessly, leaving Minghao stranded in the tunnel alone, as he sinks to his knees.

-

_You could have killed him, you could have killed him, you could have killed him…_

Minghao gives up fighting the voices in his head and cradles his skull in his hands. Seungcheol’s words keep reverberating within him, but it’s already been five hours. He’s still waiting outside the surgery room in his chair, replaying the scene in his mind for the 694th time, wondering what Mingyu meant when he said, “You brought me back”.

It’s not like it’d make a difference. He’s still going to get fired.

_You could have killed him._

“Hey, kid,” somebody whispers. Minghao’s eyes shoot open to reveal Jeon Wonwoo standing before him, an outstretched hand offering coffee in his direction.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Listen up,” Wonwoo shoves the coffee into Minghao’s hands and sits next to him on the plastic hospital chair. “The officers are going to come over later if Mingyu wakes up, and they’re going to ask us a bunch of questions. Since Kim Mingyu’s case, according to where he was found, looks like attempted murder, they’re going to ask only superficial shit, then attempt to take him to the police station for questioning. They’re low ranking officials, and they just want to not do shit, so that the superiors would do it for them tomorrow. But we’re not going to let them, okay?.”

Minghao only nods, trying to follow along.

“Because if we let them do so, they’re going to keep Mingyu cooped up in a questioning room overnight, which just feels like justified jail. And knowing those officers, they’re going to put down everyone and their mother down as suspects, and you’re definitely going on that list.”

He looks down dejectedly, shrugging. “But, I could have killed him,”

“It’s not your fault, kid,” Wonwoo says, giving Minghao an awkward pat on the shoulder and disappearing down the hallway.

-

Minghao finally gets to visit Mingyu after the operation. Before he rushes into the temporary ward, a doctor stops him to give him the low down of the diagnosis.

“Mr. Xu, am I right? I’m Yoon Jeonghan, A&E doctor from Pyeonghan Medical,” a man in blue surgical attire comes up to him as he puts on his white robes of protocol. “I figured since you were a pathologist downstairs we’re bound to meet anyway.”

“I mean, I’m an intern, but yeah. How’s Kim Mingyu?”

The doctor takes off his surgical cap and lets down chestnut-coloured shoulder length hair. “Well, it’s pretty amazing how fast he’s recovered, and I’m not praising the staff team here. When he came in he was pretty much a leaking blood tap, and with the blood mass precentage in his body it was impossible for his survival. The slash wounds everywhere were a headache but before we could stitch them all up, most had closed up on their own!”

Minghao gapes. “When I diagnosed him, they weren’t even simple slashes. They were whole areas of skin cut off over several centimetre squares worth of his epidermis.”

“Exactly. It’s not that fortunate for the right thigh where the bone was stabbed through. It definitely hasn’t healed yet but the left, with an equal surface area worth of skin damage, has a curious, other-worldly palm print on it.”

“Palm… print?”

“The rest of the left thigh is still festering, and we’re monitoring it, giving it frequent sanitization every few hours. However, in the middle of the raw, bloody flesh, there’s a dry, palm-shaped scab formed. It’s literally there, it’s crazy.”

“How does that work?”

“It doesn’t. But why would you ask me? You’re the pathologist,” Jeonghan says, bewilderment still present in his eyes. “Anyway, Kim Mingyu’s temporarily put in a shared ward, but I’m aware it’s still a criminal case, so by all means if you have to take him back to the lab or move him to another ward please do. Contact me if you need medical personnel by your side.”

Swallowing thickly, Minghao makes his way into the shared ward. Its atmosphere mirrors that of a wet market – people shouting, people dying, people moving, people being moved, people, people, people. The only difference is that the room is kept to a clinical dry minimum. But it’s a mess, and he has to sift through the throng of patients and medical staff alike just to get to the middle of the ward.

Mingyu’s sleeping on a wheeled bed, the mattress a little too small for his body. The punctured wound on his right thigh isn’t sutured to disallow fluid accumulation and infection, but there’s a rubber artificial drain wedged into his skin for blood drainage. It’s awful. He can see the damaged flesh from where he stands, but it’s hardly as severe as it was when Minghao found Mingyu’s body in the body bag, the white of his fractured bone exposed against equally stark skin. Now Mingyu’s skin is less pale, his eyes unsunken, his other slash wounds only lines of scars against skin.

_This can’t be real. No one heals this fast. No one but fucking Wolverine, but this is Kim Mingyu, former college student, former dead man._

Gingerly, Minghao lifts Mingyu’s clothing to search for the alleged palm print, and he finds it. It seemingly stares at him and the sight of maroon scabbing against raw flesh takes Minghao back to this afternoon during his brawl with Mingyu before Soonyoung came in.

 

_“Stop moving!”  I yell. The corpse moves nonetheless, trying to kick me, who does he think he is, who does he think I am. I’m not your enemy!_

_“You’re ruining your own evidence I need to know how you died!” I say, and he doesn’t care. Maybe he actually is a zombie and he doesn’t understand anything I’ve been trying to say for the past minute. I’m running out of ideas, I really am. I try to suppress him with whatever I’ve got, pressing down on the thigh that didn’t get stabbed._

_“I’m serious man you gotta stop-”_

_The door opens, and 3187E stops moving, going rigid in my arms. Soonyoung stares at the both of us. I’m just happy 3187E isn’t moving anymore, it’s really tiring to tackle someone, like, three times heavier than you are. Soonyoung really should have come  earlier. It’s more effective-_

_“Eeuugurts,” the corpse says. I’m in the midst of deciphering his words, my hand still on his thigh, when, lo and behold, Soonyoung faints. Why the hell does he work in a mortuary when he faints this easily?_

_Someone should have yelled “Timber!. I abandon Mingyu and I run to check on Soonyoung’s vitals, which seem to be fine._

_Do I deserve this much shit on my first day? No. Do I get it though? Yes._

_Seungcheol stumbles in, unsure of who to minister to first. Soonyoung on the floor, or the bloody corpse struggling to get up once again? Tough life choices. You know how there’s that quote about two roads diverged in a wood, huh? I took the one less travelled, running to back to creepy-ass Mingyu so he doesn’t injure himself further. What did my boss do? He didn’t even take any of the roads. He ran back upstairs to get a gurney._

_That quote is either bullshit, or I’m too dull to understand how taking any of the roads makes any difference. I just know the gurney was a better choice, and Soonyoung wakes up a minute later anyway. I know nothing, but the fact that I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe that can be a philosophical quote on its own. It’s far more relatable._

 

Minghao’s head spins, a little, then a lot, the ceiling fan looking like it may fall anytime, the lampshade beside him looking like it’s twirling. He sits down, his finger tracing over the scab gently.

_I couldn’t have done it. Right?_

His hand ghosts over the palm print scab, and chills actually run down his spine when the palm print fits his own.

Suddenly, Mingyu stirs, his head shaking groggily as he wakes. Minghao draws his hand back instantly, like he’s touched the tongues of fire.

He’s too scared to say anything, so he just watches. Watches as Mingyu registers his surroundings in, taking in the clinical smell of antiseptic, taking the too-bright lights, taking in the backdrop of blurry people, blurry faces.

Mingyu clears his throat and attempts to sit up, causing Minghao to panic and rush to his side.

“Your thigh is still heavily injured, Mr Kim,” Minghao says in alarm.

Mingyu waves him away. “Relax, surgeon guy. I’m fine. I feel more alive than I’ve ever been in my past twenty-two years. There’s just one thing.”

“What is it?”

“My ass, it hurts.”

Minghao bites his lips,  turning away, forcing down the laughter that bubbles at his throat.

“Is that so?” he says with his straightest face and his calmest tone.

“Yeah. During the torture session before I died, I didn’t remember sexual assault.”

“Well, I, I’m sorry?” Minghao says amidst laughter.

“You sexually assaulted me?” Mingyu roars, getting up in bed and grabbing Minghao’s shoulders, causing Minghao to lift up his hands in immediate surrender.

“No, I had to stick a needle up your anus to allow gas release! You were putrifying! You practically died then and you were decomposing so I don’t know what’s going on now!”

They stare incredulously at each other, feeling the simultaneous stares of everyone else in the room prickling into their backs.

A nurse approaches Minghao to tell him to keep his volume down to not stir patients who are asleep, which has to be the most hypocritical statement of the year because her own patient is yelling about her grand-nephew who never visits.

Minghao carries Mingyu’s IV-drip, his other hand on the railing of his wheel-able bed.

“Let’s go somewhere where it’s quiet,” Minghao whispers quickly, rolling the hospital bed out of the messy ward.

“Wait, what?” Mingyu immediately protests as he’s being rolled helplessly. “What do you think this is, a party? You take me to the side and you do the whole “let’s go to some quiet shady place” thing? Then what, you kiss me, abduct me, and assault me with your needle? I’m not dying a second time you fucker!”

They earn a couple of fleeting stares from the doctors and nurses that walk past them in the hallway. Minghao, at this point of life, does not care.

“We’re going to the mortuary.”

“Oh, great,” Mingyu tosses his hands up in the air. “I’m _actually_ going to die a second time, and you’re going to dissect me. Brilliant. Bravo.”

“Shut up, 3187E,” Minghao hisses.

A few turns and a lift to the basement finds them headed towards tunnel where they came from. Mingyu is still as noisy as all hell, moving on the rolling bed.

“You know, I’m starting to think you were easier to be with when you were dead,” Minghao mutters as he rolls him down the tunnel towards the pathological facility. Mingyu stops thrashing in bed.

“Is this where dead people pass through every day?” Mingyu asks in a soft voice.

Minghao nods, stopping to tap his access card against the reader to open the door to the body storage.

As the cold breeze of the freezer-conditioned body room blows against Mingyu, the man shuts his eyes and lies back down, covering himself with the thin flannel blanket from the hospital.

“You cold?” Minghao asks, and Mingyu can only nod.

He goes into the lift to bring him to the first level. The level of the living.

All of a sudden, Wonwoo dashes in front of them, blocking the entrance to the lift. “The cops are coming, wheel him into my office, make his injuries look as severe as possible, alright?”

Minghao doesn’t have much of a choice, so he heeds the instructions, flipping the blanket over to reveal the injuries.

“Wait, wasn’t your right thigh wound bigger? The scab enlarged, in like, twenty minutes.”

Mingyu shrugs. “You did it, why ask me?”

“I didn’t do… anything,” Minghao replies, sounding more and more unsure with every word.

“You brought me to life, dumbass,” Mingyu says convictedly.

“Don’t say stupid things! We’ll let the ECG do the talking-”

 

Wonwoo, Seungcheol, and two other cops arrive in to the room. Mingyu immediately starts groaning, and Minghao’s thankful that he’s at least playing along.

“-Okay, so it was definitely a slip of our notice, but the fault cannot be placed on Xu Minghao, who is an intern by the way. Although he conducted diagnosis on Kim Mingyu, the initial confirmation of death was done by an electrocardiogram machine, AKA, the ECG, and I administered that. However, it is faulty. Thankfully, Kim Mingyu is recovering and he wasn’t injured during diagnosis.”

The first officer seems bought over by Wonwoo’s words, but the second is still suspicious. “How do we know that the ECG machine used was faulty? Show me what it looks like on someone living. Does he appear dead?”

Wonwoo leads the officers and Seungcheol to Mingyu’s side, and hooks the faulty ECG machine to himself, but the reading turns out normal – Wonwoo is living. However, Wonwoo doesn’t panic.

“You see, I appear living on the reading. This is where we are lead to believe it is still working, so there hasn’t been a maintenance session so far on this ancient machine. However, I saw my co-worker Minghao familiarising himself with the ECG machine functions this morning, and unknowingly, it had been registering his cardio-activity. Surprisingly, he was registered as dead.”

“Wait, what?” Minghao hisses.

Wonwoo mouths a “trust me” in his direction, hooking up the machine to Minghao.

The reading goes flat, leaving the officers and Seungcheol speechless.

“Why don’t you try it on yourself?” Wonwoo challenges. They all appear living.

Wonwoo then turns back to them. “You see, it is because of these occasional inconsistencies that we were unaware of the machine’s deterioration. It had been used since the start of this pathological facility, now for more than twenty years. We will replace it promptly. As for Kim Mingyu, you may now begin brief questioning, but Kim Mingyu should not be brought to the station as he is not in the condition to do so, as you can see.”

_Holy shit, Wonwoo is smart._

Minghao follows Wonwoo out of the room as they begin questioning. “Why so scared, kid? I took your name off their suspect list.”

Minghao shakes his head. “I still can’t believe why I’m registered as dead on that ECG.”

Wonwoo shrugs. “I honestly don’t know, but I’m glad to get rid of it. It’s creepy, sometimes. We need a new one anyway.”

“Creepy?”

“It’s said that sometimes, when that particular ECG machine is hooked up to someone living and seemingly healthy, it can go flat or very faint if the person is about to die in a few hours. A husband once brought his dead wife here for funeral preperations, but he was extremely heartbroken. He was a strong, muscular guy though, and he was hyperventilating for quite a bit. However, when me and Myungeun hooked him up to this ECG, the reading went flat. Even when he was hyperventilating, which should have shown a faster than usual heartbeat.”

“What happened afterwards?”

“He said he was fine and he went back after calming down and settling on a casket for his wife, but his eyes where devoid of life, and he looked like he no longer had purpose. Later when he went back, he seemed well. But the next morning, we got a call saying that he got hit by a car while crossing the road while the green man was still flashing.”

Minghao peers at Wonwoo curiously. “Really? But I’m not dead yet. It’s been almost twelve hours since this morning.”

“Maybe you’re lucky,” Wonwoo shrugs, “Maybe you’re going to die later. Or maybe this is all bullshit, but who cares, I need a new ECG machine.”

 

The doors to Wonwoo’s office open and the officers come out, bowing and bidding them goodbye. When everyone’s left, Wonwoo gets Minghao and Mingyu to leave his office too.

 

“Where do I go now?” Mingyu asks, voice wobbly, as Minghao stands with the bed, looking aimlessly at both ends of the hallway.

“Are you scared, Mingyu? You’ve been less… annoying… since we’ve gotten to the pathological labs.”

 “Do my parents know I’m alive? Do they even know I died?” he asks desperately, avoiding the topic.

“Your parents are overseas, right? We’ve tried contacting them but there’s been no response.”

“Then… Mijoo?” Mingyu asks hopefully.

“Who’s Mijoo?”

“My, uh, ex-girlfriend.”

“Do you know her number? Because you didn’t seem to have a phone with you when they found you.”

Mingyu pouts dejectedly. “I don’t.”

“Oh well, I can help you check her up in our database tomorrow. I don’t think you’re in the state to go to your cramped university dorm too. So it looks like you’re going to have to stay here tonight.”

Mingyu gapes at Minghao, horrified.

“Here?  Where all the dead people are? I can feel them in the body bags, I can hear some of them telling me that I’m going to regret living again… I can hear some of them calling out… for you, surgeon guy.”

“Me? How do you-”

“They want you to look them in the eyes too. They want a second chance,” Mingyu says, trembling. Slowly, he gets out of his bed, steadying himself with the railings, and standing on two feet.

Minghao finds all of the information too hard to process all at once. It’s getting really late, it’s past two in the morning, and he really should be getting home.

“Dead people are just dead people, Mingyu. And I can’t do anything about that. You can stay in my office if you want, unless you want to go to the hospital and wait another five hours on your own for a vacant ward – which would be morning by then.”

“Your office,” Mingyu answers helplessly.

“Alright. I’ll irrigate your stab wound and disinfect the area one more time, then I’m going home, is that okay with you?”

Mingyu nods. In that moment, it’s like all 185 cm of Kim Mingyu’s become smaller than Minghao’s self. Minghao almost feels bad as he cleans the wounds and as his fingers trail over the palm print on Mingyu’s thigh.

“You did that by the way,” Mingyu says, nudging his head in the direction of the palm print.

This time, Minghao stops insisting. It’s been a long day.

 

“I don’t know,” he answers finally. Minghao’s about to leave, when a hand grasps his wrist.

“Hey, surgeon. Can you put your hand on my left thigh?”

“But, the wound’s there.”

Mingyu insists pleadingly, gripping Minghao’s wrist harder and placing MInghao’s hand on the affected area.

“Just, just stay like this for a while.”

“I’m going to introduce more bacteria, Mingyu,” Minghao worries, but there’s a smile growing on Mingyu’s face, a glow that’s almost ethereal spreading across his features. A smile that tells him that he should leave his hand there longer, a glow that tells him to stay.

 

“Thanks,” Mingyu finally says, allowing Minghao to retract his hand.

“Why did you want me to touch you?”

“Because I can feel it now.”

“Feel what?” His heart beats against his chest, and seemingly echoes throughout the room.

“My thigh bone… it’s fusing together.”

Minghao’s eyes widen impossibly. It can’t be.

 

“I’m not Wolverine. You’re my Golden Fleece. ”

 

Minghao can only shake his head in disbelief. “I gotta go now, call my number on this post-it if you need help with your wound” he says, his hand on the doorknob as he chews on his bruised lips.

Mingyu tries to laugh. “Be safe?”

“You’ll be fine, won’t you?”

“Why, uh, why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been kidnapped, tortured for hours on end, stabbed in the thigh, left out in a ditch to bleed and die, fought with a pathologist whose name I’m still unaware of… what’s a few hours in the mortuary compared to that?”

Mingyu’s voice trembles. He’s so scared, but Minghao can pretend. He can pretend he doesn’t hear the lilt in his voice, he can pretend he doesn’t hear the doubt.

“We’re twenty two. We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine,” Minghao convinces himself. “See you tomorrow, Mingyu.”

“See you tomorrow, uh-“

Minghao closes the door behind him before he hears Mingyu finish his sentence. He’d feel bad and turn around if he did. 

_I_ _forgot to tell him my name._

 

_Not like it’d matter. Tomorrow he’ll find his family, his ex-girlfriend, and he’ll begin his life anew. He’ll go back to being the beloved hot guy on campus. I’ll either get fired, or get back to being the problematic intern trying to survive amidst the dead. And I’ll be sifting through another pile of stale bodies, another pile of past stories, present regrets. Mingyu’s just one of these bodies, just 3187E in a sea of other four-digit alphabetical serial numbers. Tomorrow… I’ll start real work tomorrow. Nothing can phase me now._

 

 

 

It’s three in the morning when MInghao gets home, almost passing out on the floor the moment he gets back. He’s about to fall asleep on the bed when a phone call wakes him up from sweet slumber.

“Hey, surgeon guy.”

“Oh, Mingyu, is your wound acting up?”

“Uh, no. It’s healing pretty fast, uh, actually. Uh, I can even walk now.”

Minghao groans tiredly. “Then why’d you call me?”

“You know, sometimes humans get a profound feeling, uh, it’s like crippling and uh,”

“What is it,” he sighs impatiently, ready to go back to sleep.

“I’m scared, man.”

He jolts up in bed, phone wedged between his ears and shoulder, car keys in his mouth, running his hand through his hair and locking the apartment door behind him. Minghao could pretend, but he doesn't want to anymore.

 

 

“I’m coming over.”

 


	4. then superman that oh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an interlude-  
> mingyu finds a purpose;  
> joshua finds a friend.

 

When the first rays of morning shine through, Mingyu stirs in his sleep, but doesn’t open his eyes.

The haze in front of his pupils, behind his eyelids, they don’t clear. Somebody shrieks.

Mingyu turns around hopelessly, in search for the source of sound. The haze clears, and the familiar face appears. She’s dragged forward into the spotlight from the darkness.

“Well, lover boy, let’s see her watch you crumble.”

He struggles against the ropes, the splinters of the rattan eating into his skin. The knife comes dangerously close to his thighs, and he shuts his eyes.

It cuts in once again, inching closer to his groin each time, the pain blinding him.

He bites on his tongue.

When he opens his eyes, he can see her watching him, the tears forming in her beautiful eyes. She doesn’t deserve to see this.

_Why didn’t you tell me anything, Mijoo. Have you been hiding everything from me all this while?_

“Let’s see how much longer you can hold on before you tell us what the _fuck_ you did with her fiancé, Romeo. Because I can do this _all day.”_

The knife graces over the marred flesh once more, in the hands of henchman in a mask. He doesn’t have a pinky on his finger, and it’s the last striking thing he can remember before the pain overwhelms him.

Mingyu head-butts the man, thrusting the whole knife right into his thigh bone. He hears his own bones crushing against himself, and then he blackouts.

 

 

_Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t-_

Kim Mingyu breaks out into a cold sweat and jolts up out of bed. He takes a breath and the air has never smelled sweeter.

He’s not strapped to a chair. He’s in a portable bed gurney.

With his chest heaving, he falls back onto the bed. A thought forms at the back of his mind and pushes itself to centre stage.

_Mijoo._

_I have to save her._

 

The surgeon guy’s sleeping on the desk next to him, and in the light, he looks ethereal in some manner Mingyu cannot pinpoint.

_He told me last night that his name was Minghao. He’s Chinese. Same age. Undergraduate._

_My ticket to finding Mijoo._

Mingyu shakes Minghao up hurriedly, earning unhappy grunts from the latter.

“What the _fuck_ do you want from me-“

“Do you have a car?”

“Yes, how do you think I got here to babysit your whiny ass-”

“Great. Let’s go! Meet you at the car in five minutes!”

Minghao stares at Mingyu trailing figure as he bounds down the corridor.

_I didn’t sign up for this._

 

 

“Good morning Mr Hong,” a pair of giggly nurses greet him and he smiles as he walks down the hallway bridge in the hospital to his office.

Louis Vuitton shoes? Check.

Hair slicked back? Check.

Two thousand dollar briefcase? Check.

The spring in his step tells Joshua Hong one thing: it’s going to be another day of success stories and fatter pay-checks.

And life? Life is fucking awesome.

 

 

“Hey. Got you your coffee from two streets down. Affogato because you’re disgustingly sweet. Or sweetly disgusting. Whatever suits you,” Lee Soojung, head paediatrician says as she pushes a newspaper towards him across the table, held down by the coffee cup.

Joshua picks it up with a satisfied smile. “Rookie Doctor Saves Near-Fatal Car Pile-up Crash Victim”, the headline reads.

He raises his eyebrows. “Thanks for the coffee and the news. One’s a surprise to see, the other isn’t. Guess.”

Soojung huffs sarcastically. “Oh, tell me. I can’t wait!”

 “The surprise is that your early morning PMS-self got me a drink!”

Yoon Jeonghan walks in as Soojung walks out, one hand twisting his locks into a bun. “So you’re telling me that _you_ saving people and ending up on the front page of the newspapers isn’t a surprise? For someone who’s been here for two weeks, that’s quite the ego.”

Joshua laughs. “Confidence is key, Doctor Yoon.”

Jeonghan rolls his eyes. The new doctor’s every bit a cocky perfectionist, but he can’t deny that Joshua Hong’s excellent at doing his job.

 

 

“Anyway, did you guys hear about the college kid who got raised to life?” Yoo Jiae chirps from her corner, peeling her eyes away from the lab results on her computer for once. “It’s usually me bringing bodies from the hospital to Seungcheol in the mortuary. This guy went the other way round.”

“Oh, god. Yeah. I attended to him in surgery and post-surgery. His recovery rate is amazing. It’s almost like he’s … regenerating,” Jeonghan marvels.

Joshua finally looks up from the newspaper. “He came from the _mortuary?”_

Jeonghan scoffs and places a hand on Joshua’s shoulder, like it was meant to be assuring. “Honestly, hotshot, there’s nothing to fear. The people that work there, they’re like, tooth-fairies? But like, they take the dead away instead."

“And they return as ashes,” Jiae adds. “Voila!”

“Isn’t that the Grim Reaper though,” Joshua says.

“New guy has a point,” Soojung says meaningfully as she returns, holding hands with a five year old leukemia patient, the smile on the little girl’s face peaceful, innocent, unknowing.

“Anyway, Seungcheol seemed pretty freaked out too,” Jeonghan says, “even the intern pathologist was less fazed than he was.”

“Wait, who?” Joshua says.

“The intern. Minghao?”

Joshua shakes his head. “No, before that.”

“Oh, the funeral director? His name’s Seungcheol. Choi Seungcheol. Most of the staff there call him the undertaker.”

Joshua stares at the papers like he’s just gotten a revelation.

 

_Small world, man._


End file.
